


Black Holes on Earth

by palettesofrenaissance



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Development, Character Study, College, Connie gets therapy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gap Filler, Gen, Growing Up, Meeting Again Years Later, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Steven Universe Future, Pre-Steven Universe Future, Psychological Trauma, Self-Discovery, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24057337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palettesofrenaissance/pseuds/palettesofrenaissance
Summary: As a child, Connie used to memorize the constellations outside her bedroom window and in rented library books.On the edge of sixteen, she makes her own with blue ballpoint pens, connecting the faint freckles on the back shoulders of the star-child after his healing battle scars are bandaged. Her fingers glide over the leftover burn scars and momentary darkened, bruised skin, the permanent reminders of battles and tarnished childhood memories by invading aliens.Five years ago, Connie was forced to return tonormal.She returned and completed middle school, graduated alongside classmates and posed for photos and ignored her mother’s excited squeals. Her mind spaced out, and at the first drumbeat as the band began to play, she had a panic attack.[ A Connie-centric peek between the events of SU and Future. It explores her point of view, mindset, and follows Connie from right before Future to years later after she's left for college, answering the question: "How is Connie dealing with everything that happened? She experienced a lot as well." ]Features Steven in the next chapter. Mentions of Greg and Rose/Pink.
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Priyanka Maheswaran, Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe
Comments: 19
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I saw some art on Tumblr that made me think about Connie. After watching SU Future I became curious about how her character could have developed if she had been given more screen time. It was also to explore the sides of Connie that aren't shown. This turned out to be far longer than I anticipated_

It's said that a black hole bends the fabric of space around itself and it is impossible to escape its gravitational pull; it's one of the universe's greatest anomalies and a beautiful, destructive phenomena. It's theorized that near a black hole, time slows, and at its event horizon, time stops altogether.

It's believed that black holes devour anything that falls into the net of its event horizon. They're deadly, carnivorous, cannibalistic.

Black holes are found throughout the universe, often times not discovered until too late, hiding, and not until they've already begun corrupting a nearby star.

Oftentimes, black holes can be found on planet Earth, too.

* * *

Connie can testify about one.

* * *

**Universe**

> yo͞o·nē·vers  
> u·ni·verse
> 
> _noun_

  1. Defined as: A particular sphere of activity, interest, or experience.
  2. Defined as: The whole world, especially with reference to humanity.
  3. Defined as: a) The world of human experience. b) All existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos.
  4. Defined as: A distinct field or province of thought or reality that forms a closed system or self-inclusive and independent organization.
  5. Defined as: Responsibility; inheritance; Pink; galaxies and star clusters unjustly thrusted into prepubescent hands of a prince who hasn't ever been granted the privilege of touching the hand of or cried on the shoulder of his mother.



* * *

On November 14th at 4:31 AM, a health baby girl is born to Priyanka and Doug Maheswaran. Five pounds, seven ounces. Birthed with a tuff of black hair on her head, blushed fatty skin, large and irresistible and impressionable eyes. She's five days old when her mother finally settles on a name: Kanupriya—Kan to Kanni to—nicknamed Connie for short.

Connie has had a lot to deal with. She's to grow up with her whole life planned out for her—with some wiggle room, of course. She's to be put in a Head-start program for preschool, then get moved up a grade or two once beginning enrollment. She's to have a rigid school and study schedule, and graduate high school with nothing lower than a 4.0 GPA. When applying for universities, the interest and persuasion planned to be ingrained at toddler age will take effect then, driving her interests in the medical field and will feed into her decisions for university applications. There, she will earn a degree in a medical field and maybe, just maybe, she'll marry a doctor and move out and live in a relationship where she won't _ever_ have to worry and become a devoted wife and pop out two or three—

She's expected to produce nothing short of 200% in success.

Expectations are one of the worst things parents can force their children to inherit, whether with selfish intentions or not.

Connie has had to deal with a lot—like how to express her personal feelings and interests to her strict parents; like finding out what she wants for _herself_. Like trying to speak in a way that her parents will most likely be persuaded in her favor. Like how her life turns on its head at twelve years old and she meets the son of a black hole.

When Connie is twelve, she learns that life can't always be fixed with timidness and pacifism. Emotions aren't things to solve, like equations, and they don't always have predictable outcomes like an algebraic calculation or step-by-step directions.

Then four months after Connie's twelfth birthday, she stares out at the rolling ocean waves and strikes a conversation with the lonely son with galaxies in his eyes.

The boy was born from a literal supernova explosion and a van-dwelling couch-surfer—the most peculiar combination with the boy being an eccentric outcome, she thinks. The boy is an amalgam of both fascination and dreadful misery. And he strikes a metaphorical match, hands it to Connie, and soon she's able to create the flames of her own fire.

It isn't long—a year and two months, to be exact—until they find out that the aforementioned supernova had collapsed long ago, hiding behind the veil of stars and sparkles and sanguine pink and false pretense.

And then Connie watches the star-child slowly collapse on his own over time, forced to bend and break to fill out the mold and the legacy left by his mother and becomes as self-cannibalistic as she had been during her first conception.

Connie used to study the stars through her telescope. Now, two more years later, she witnesses the evolution of one as he spills out on the triple-waxed hardwood floor, anguished and catastrophic and self-destructive.

As a child, Connie used to memorize the constellations outside her bedroom window and in rented library books. On the edge of sixteen, she makes her own with blue ballpoint pens, connecting the faint freckles on the back shoulders of the star-child after his healing battle scars are bandaged. Her fingers glide over the leftover burn scars from comet impacts from battle and the momentary darkened, bruised skin from burning solar flares, the permanent reminders of tarnished childhood memories by invading aliens. There are old claw marks that left laceration scars leading to his core that Connie sees, sometimes, when he's asleep and his shirt rises up, and then Connie thinks about time.

She thinks about relativity. She thinks about death, life, and infinity.

* * *

Albert Einstein proposed the concept of spacetime as being like a stretched bedsheet: if it is held flat at each corner and a ball was placed in its center, the ball would be an individual's masses turning in the void of outer space. The heavier the ball, the deeper the indent, therefore the greater its mass and gravity by extension.

Earth—Jamie, Sadie, Lars, Kevin, Sour Cream, Kiki, Greg, Vidalia, Connie—are tennis balls, golf balls, racquet balls barely making a dent.

Then, with the advantage of a warp pad, a shapeshifting metal ball lands on Earth and courts a lighter weight ball who had been none the wiser, believing she was an angel from the heavens, a living star walking among mere humans. Unknowingly, this immortal ball was actually a heavy bowling ball and not the lightweight aluminum as she appeared to be.

 _"I barely know you,"_ says the insignificant racquet ball, forbidding his own developing emotions. 

The bowling ball freezes in his arms and stares off at the horizon from over his head. _"Maybe that's a good thing."_

She thinks about her old servant whose eye is disfigured beyond repair.

> _"She had a scream that could crack the walls. She didn't mean to hurt me. I just happened to be standing too close to her that time."_

And she thinks about the exuberant personification of joy, her old playmate who was lied to and knowingly left behind but who still hoped for her to return.

> _"Every day was so much fun...at least, that's what I thought. Aren't I a fool to have happily listened, happy to stay? Happily watching her drift away."_

And she thinks about her ex-partner, fellow escapee from Homeworld who loved her unconditionally and more than she deserved.

> _"Who am I now in this world without her? Petty and dull with the nerve to doubt her."_

And she thinks about her close blacksmith friend whose might was as strong as her forged swords, but whom the bowling ball poofed and bubbled, too fearful that her lies and shrouded identity would be found out—and then subjectively killed.

> _"What kind of leader cares more about the Gems of her enemy than her own? You should have shattered me back then. At least if I'm in pieces, I wouldn't know how little I meant to you; you didn't even tell them. You bubbled me away and you didn't even tell your friends—my friends."_

And she remembers, _"Oh, it's you"_ spoken by her equals with degradation, and she remembers shattering glass with her fist and those she's betrayed, who she led astray, and the victims of her crossfires who drifted too close and destroyed by the pull of her gravity towards her event horizon.

 _"I'm...not a good person,"_ she thinks.

 _"I'm not a real person,"_ she says instead—a black hole, true to her large size, and disguised in a cloud of pink ringlet curls and a cotton silk dress.

 _"How are we going to make this work? Us?"_ Said the racquet ball, unaware of how close he’s drifting to her danger zone.

According to Einstein, bowling balls—made out of heavy reactive resin—make the deepest known indents in the metaphoric bedsheet of spacetime. These "bowling balls" are the carnivores of the stars, the invisible killers that distort the light around them being the only way to discover them.

And when they come in contact with other objects, their victims are drawn in and consequently destroyed before ever realizing.

Reading his angst and teary eyes, she asks, _"Is this torture?"_

_"Worse."_

_"I'm so sorry, Greg."_

* * *

Connie is thirteen when she realizes that books are best for reading and less for trying to imitate into real life. She finds this out through lying to her parents' face, then immediately nearly losing an arm then her head from her shoulders, and then stares down death in the face. And it is consequently a lot less exciting than she imagines.

Six months into being thirteen, Connie travels lightyears to a distant planet and defies laws of nature and ages a minimum of five years. Metaphorically.

At thirteen she performs a forbidden dance, learns a different meaning of the saying "two becoming one," lives another's experience by diving into the mind of a celestial, and nearly dies again. She walks among the land of giants—as tall as four-story skyscrapers—and she holds back tears.

Connie witnesses death, sees enough horrific body transformations and disfigurations that stay in her dreams for years; she's forced inside an alien's body like being stuck between walls, outsmarts an executioner, comes near death again, and then she sees a near beheading—of sorts—and she holds death right in her premature arms, feeling the last ragged few gasps for air from the star-child—from her _friend_ —as his life fades away in front of her eyes. As his time ticks away like blood from a bullet to the head, quickly becoming lifeless from his core—his _life-source_ —torn from his body on the polished floors of a throne room with an audience, his family turned into living marionette puppets against their will by an eighty-two foot-tall tyrant.

Connie cries—because after it all, she's brave, yes, and very, extremely persevering, but she's _scared_. She’s excruciatingly, _violently terrified_. Because—even though the title _knight_ and _warrior_ are self-assurance and the aliases are comforting—at the end of the day she's still thirteen. She's still a _child_. She's too young and hasn't even started high school or hit puberty yet. She still sleeps with a nightlight, makes a wish at every 11:11, and she's only _just_ started her menstrual cycle. She misses her childhood stuffed elephant. She misses her mother's biriyani and warm embrace and her father burning incense.

Connie lives a lifetime more—three even, it feels, maybe—and when she returns to Earth, she's spent and wary and experienced and _bored_.

Priyanka sends her daughter back to school after she returns to Earth without knowing a thing—Connie struggles for three weeks on how to share the details, of _when_ to bring it up, of what words to use, and then whether she _should_ tell the truth at all.

Connie returns to _normal_ and she finds out that she doesn't _want_ to go. She doesn't want to see the white-washed walls and graffitied metal lockers and last-minute projects stapled to bulletin boards and cobweb-infested trophies locked behind glass and lukewarm beefaroni and tacos for lunch with too-dry bread rolls and desks with uneven legs and surface edges that are chipped and permanently scarred with drawings and deeply etched messages.

She returns and completes middle school, graduates alongside classmates and poses for photos and ignores her mother’s excited squeals. Her mind spaces out, and at the first drumbeat as the band begins to play, she has a panic attack.

The girl beside Connie glances over, unamused, and is never aware of the fearful images playing behind Connie’s eyes—that the bass drum sounds like a spaceship blasting off, that it’s similar to a brutish butterscotch-orange Gem’s helmet colliding with Garnet’s gauntlets when she’d been _sure_ she was to be trampled to death. That it reminds her of horrific corrupted creatures emerging from cavernous rock walls.

The girl in the metal foldable chair beside her watches with little interest as Connie jumps to her feet and rummages through her graduation gown, searching for the handle of Rose Quartz’s sword, eyes wide and terrified, searching for the echoes of danger.

Luckily, she isn't called out about it. And when her wrist is touched by a girl in the row in front—a girl from Reading and Science classes, Connie remembers, and who is clearly concerned—Connie fades back to the present.

The bass drum beats in time with the rest of the eighth grade band. Connie's asked if she's "okay?"

She shivers once and lies that she's "just fine, just startled."

The rest of the ceremony goes by in a blur. She deflects questions about her attack when her parents later question her action.

* * *

“Tell us about a significant event in your life,” her English teacher instructs to a class full of uninterested fourteen-year olds.

Boys and girls, they obediently—with some anticipated groaning—open their journals and share mundane memories: a birthday. A family trip. A week at a theme park. A camping expedition. A first broken bone. A now-deceased pet.

“Tell us about yourself,” the class is instructed.

Connie is in ninth grade now and in her first year of high school. She's crudely finding out that it isn't like the poorly-scripted television shows or the young adult novels she binge-read.

One girl raises her hand and asks if she can write about her first menstruation. One boy writes about stealing his first kiss last week. One girl writes about befriending a cancer survivor.

Connie stares at her blank pages for ten minutes before she’s approached by her teacher in worry.

“Are you having trouble?”

Connie shrugs her shoulders and partially lies that she couldn’t decide on a life-changing event. These daily journal entries are meant to serve as a partial diary but some writing exercises are graded.

The woman pats Connie’s shoulder and cheerfully exclaims that anything is allowed; the only one who will be reading this entry are the writers. Connie doesn’t truly trust her.

“You have fifteen more minutes,” the teacher announces.

And so, Connie writes about feeling out of place in school for the “Tell me about yourself” paragraph. She vents about feeling as if she doesn’t deserve her friends, that it feels like she wears a mask in public, to her parents, and community, and she doesn’t feel like she can prevent the flip-switch change in persona. She either puts up an obedient, barely objecting attitude at home or she is the fearless knight to her friends who and is the one who never cracks, never breaks down, and she’s always there for someone to lean on or to give advice.

She feels like a fraud to who she truly is. She feels like she's going to eventually lose her mind.

For the “Significant life event” paragraph, she writes about the feeling of her body contorting and re-forming to create a new, singular being with the lone-boy who has a gravitational-like pull to her, keeping her forever near. She writes about her interest in physical endurance fuels her flashbacks to when she nearly drowned, and she hasn’t swam in the ocean in five years. She writes a “fun fact” that she learned swords fighting and used it to “poof” people who kidnapped and imprisoned her.

Three days later, Connie’s parents are contacted on the pretense that Connie had premature sexual experiences and some prevailing trauma from endangering encounters—going by Connie’s word choices and what the teacher assumes are _metaphors_.

“My wife is a psychologist,” the teacher shares after scheduling a parent-teacher meeting. “And from what I picked up from her, these events Connie wrote about can severely impact her psychological development as she ages and matures. Not to mention how, if gone unchecked, it will impact her relationships, her perception of the world, and the relationship with herself.”

The Maheswarans understand and thank the teacher. Afterwards, they pick up Connie from tennis practice and the car ride home is uncharacteristically silent. When they pull into the driveway, a pink lion is waiting in their lawn. Her parents watch Connie gleefully embrace the large feline and sink into its lush mane and her parents quietly fret over how to bring up the topic of their daughter's journal—about the written entries, about their worries, her teacher’s concerns, and needing explanations.

* * *

Connie finds herself in a foreign room across from a woman with blonde hair and deep-set wrinkles. Two Master’s degree and a PhD are framed in cherry wood hang on the wall above an office water dispenser. An essential oil diffuser releases lavender and rose every fifteen minutes. And Connie feels no bit of concern and instead feels dread when the woman compliments her attire, when she informs why Connie’s parents brought her here—like Connie hadn’t _already_ figured it out—and the woman shares a bullshit story about her own first therapist visit as an even more pitiful attempt at trying to connect.

In truth, Connie feels very little for this woman’s attempts. She doesn’t care but plays along anyway, not realizing her mask comes on even as she nods along and asks more questions about the woman than Connie is answering about herself.

Connie crosses her knees and her ankles and is polite as she _smiles_ when she’s asked, “How are you feeling?”

 _Fine_ , Connie answers, the same she does for every visit until she slowly begins to reveals her truth.

“How are you feeling?”

_Same answer as on Tuesday._

“How are you feeling?”

_Annoyed._

“How are you feeling?”

_Irritated._

“How are you feeling?”

_Bored._

“How are you feeling?”

_Apathetic._

“How are you feeling?”

_Depressed._

* * *

One day, Connie is greeted by a newly written, one-word message left from the class before in black pen on her assigned desk in science class

_I'm so fucking bored x_x_

She holds off her urge until thirty minutes into the lesson. She writes underneath it: _ikr! I would rather still be on break than here. Literally_. She doesn't think much of it.

The next day, she's greeted by a follow up message, written in black pen ink again: _If the world ended again and the continents shifted again it would be much more interesting than this. I would even take going to outer space._

Connie responds in dark red pen beneath it: _Same! Outer space is SO much more interesting than this_

 ** _You say that like you have been_** , _Appears the next day._

 _I have_ , Connie writes that afternoon.

 ** _HOW? You go to space summer camp?_** Is written halfway down the desk the next day.

_I know a guy ;) No I haven't been to space camp. Have you been?_

**_Yeah I went last summer, going this summer. Did you go to space because a rich guy? Your boyfriend?_ **

_No. Just special. Not my boyfriend_

**_Sure *rolling-eyes face* And are you a girl or boy? idk why but I picture you as a girl. What's your friend's name then?_ **

_I'm a girl. And I see you as a guy, are you? And my friend, I'll just call him Star._

**_What's your name?_ **

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This was planned to be one chapter but I divided it in half so it would not be one way-too-long chapter_
> 
> _Also I likes the play on space in the show's name and it would have been cool to see more play on the subject in the show_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _tagging[KatieThelie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieThelie) because she encouraged me to finish and update this asap_

_' ' What's your name? ' ' she's asked._

* * *

**Maheswaran**

> _ma·kē·svar·aṉ  
>  ma·he·swar·an_
> 
> _noun_
> 
> _Language origin: Tamil; Sanskrit; Hindu_

  1. Meaning: Shiva.
  2. Meaning: The greatest God.
  3. Meaning: self-confidence, disciplined, a high standard of honesty, dependable, practical.
  4. Meaning: Foolish-minded, mistaken mortals who think that they can touch stars, much less capture them because said stars are forever burning, eternally shifting, evolving, and destructive. And dangerous.



* * *

In one of the laws of physics, the conservation of energy, states that energy can neither be created or destroyed but it can be transformed from one form to another. And since energy cannot be created or destroyed, the amount of energy present in the universe always remains constant.

But some things in the universe play by their own rules. One such instance has a living survivor: Greg Universe, and the incident permanently discoloring his skin a red burn from when his loving fiancé imploded and re-developed, re-molded her body to form their offspring, the little star-child born from her supernova.

Connie bares her own evidence of impacts from asteroids brought on by the star she’s been orbiting—her evidence in the form of a repaired broken nose, in scars that are long-healed but left her skin discolored. In the girls' locker room before gym practice at high school, she's occasionally questioned about the origin of the scar winding from her shoulder blade to her bra's clasp. Or the stitch scar across her left knee. Or the faint discoloration across her nose's cartilage that isn't covered up by her blooming acne blemishes.

She puts on her knee-length gym shorts and tied her hair up and participates in the instructed gym activities and plays along with the rest of her fellow students.

Sometimes when she's alone, getting dressed in a bathroom stall or in the confines of her home, her fingertips glide over the scars and tries to force the memories to erode from her mind. And then she'll dab a bit of scar removal cream with her fingers, pin her hair back with clasps, and she will avoid the topic, avoid looking, avoid the thought—

And yet she keeps orbiting around the one who she was with when earning them all. 

* * *

High school becomes better for Connie by the next year. She’s starting to manage well, voices when she needs space from her friends, and tries speaking her mind more to her parents.

That last one is an ongoing struggle.

It's prevalent when she interacts with her parents, them still holding strong to the life plan they've had written out for her since birth. Or, when she raises her hand in class and overhears snide comments and snickers from the boys in the room. Or, when she her stomach twists and knots from cramps and anxiety and she has to rush to the bathroom, her head full of infuriation from persecuting classmates and having to speak in front of the room, and she'll lift her head from the toilet bowl and lie and say that she must have eaten something bad. Or, when she misses tennis or violin practice because her worries have made her migraine so bad that she can't function properly.

Connie's ongoing struggle to speak her mind is prevalent when she texts her softhearted friend and wishes him happy birthday. And when her phone shows he’s read it but he doesn’t reply, Connie types a thought: that she’d seen he’s read her text. She clicks the back arrow, erasing it all. She debates whether to type that she’s wanting to meet up today. She worries if she should come over and visit. Balancing her phone in both hands, her thumbs hover over the screen but she never sends another message.

She’s called inside by her mother then, alerting that the timer is going off, signaling Connie’s break from college prep has ended.

* * *

Steven turns sixteen on a Wednesday and all he wants is to be alone.

He's in pain—a slight but deeply rooted throbbing mysteriously growing from within his chest to spread out through every crevice of his body—from his core to his head and the joints of his toes.

Now a daily occurrence, he's forced to lie awake before the first rays of sunlight filters in and as the hollow pain steadily grows worse and the static in his brain increases in volume. Sometimes he's unable to move until his trance is broken by the shrill of his alarm. Other times the internal, gut-retching agony—which isn't like a stab by a knife, but some other unknown kind of searing, clawing pain that hurts _more_ —is so bad he lies still and lets tears slide to his ears and pillowcase.

Now sixteen, the boy born from a black hole stares at his ceiling every morning until his alarm goes off, feeling like he's being sucked into infinity. And then he stands and gets dressed and forces a fool-proof smile on his face as he _shoves_ down the aforementioned pain tearing from within his chest and the bags under his eyes are steadily growing worse and his addiction to morning caffeine is starting to no longer take effect and he takes compliments about his maturity and responsible nature and astounding calmness with a tense jaw and a tight-lip smile and he swallows down his words and kills half-formed thoughts about ruined childhoods having aged him, and expels any signs of visible stress.

Depending on the mass, density, and color of the end of a star's life cycle can be predicted—turning into a white dwarf, a red giant, a nebula from a supernova, or a black—

What happens when the star starts to consume itself, killing itself, speeding up its cycle?

* * *

Growing up, Connie was akin to the miraculous manifestation of dreams—of the romanticized combination of the courageous warriors and kind heroines and the women his father would share in retellings of his daydreamy stories.

As he and Connie grew, Steven began thinking that she was something he could revolve around—she pulled him in with her individualism, snagged him with her ambition, kept him hooked throughout the years through her courage, candor, and advanced comprehension.

Steven can picture himself revolving around her for the rest of his life. And so, he did what he'd seen adults do under similar spoken feelings. But he doesn't factor in his immaturity and youth and _the law_ , most importantly, and gets down on one knee and proposes with a glow-in-the-dark bracelet in flip-flops and a suit jacket on the shores of Beach City.

Consequently—as foreseen, he's rejected.

 _Of course_ he is.

Young and momentarily less dumb, Connie kisses his cheek and reminds him, _"We're sixteen."_

_"So, is that a 'no'?"_

_"That's a 'not now'."_

But he takes it in stride—and eats a little of his feelings, names nurtured plants after his troubles before killing them to expel his emotions, sits at the edge of his bed and daydreams with tears falling into his lap, and fantasizes dangerous thoughts while staring at his battle and circumstantial scars in the mirror, and snapping the rubber band around his wrist whenever the thoughts get _too bad_ , and he hyper-focuses and pours his attention into rehabilitating restored Gems at Little Homeschool.

When he's reached a lot, when the metaphorical liter-sized container for his emotions are overflowing, that rubber band gets _a lot_ of attention. When the house is silent and he's alone and is spiraling into the depths of his intrusive thoughts where everything is unreal and uncertain and questionable, when he isn't quite sure what is real anymore. If _he's_ real and has agency and isn't just a reformed carbon copy of Rose Qua— _Pink Diamond_. He looks towards the bedside dresser drawer where he hid one of his stolen Exact-o-knives. (Stolen years ago from Sadie because he was young and it was small and convenient and Steven thought it was _cool_ and that she will never need it anyway because she always keeps one in her pocket.)

He remembers when he first used it for personal reasons—when he was young, far too young. He remembers the sting of the blade, the choke within his throat, and the sigh of relief that never came; Steven remembers cutting the inside of his left arm and watching with despair, with betrayal, with dismay and repulse as his skin heals itself right after the blade. He tried it on his other arm, on both legs, but barely a drop of blood fell. He remembers the relief never coming, and so he fell back onto his bed, allowing his emotions and intrusive flashbacks and remembrances of his identity crisis choke him to tears and then eventually to sleep.

For the past four years, the growing star-child—Steven—puts on a face and swallows his worsening depression and ignores his reoccurring nightmares and neglects the few hairline fractures he's felt forming in his gem. He uses whiteout on his calendar book—on certain days of the year that had been for preparation in the past, for those in the future that make the ocean of acid rise in his chest—and he cries and cries and cries and he's stressed out and feels like he's burning alive, like he's _dying_ , and he begs for peace, prays for an end to it all; he wants to shatter, to finally explode into his own supernova, but then he sees pink and blue and yellow and white and flashbacks to _blood red_ and he sees _death_.

His father visits, encourages him to eat, helps put Steven to sleep, and silently removes all the knives and scissors in the house.

Steven deletes the dates from his phone's calendar too, and makes it a point to show appreciation to his _mother figures_ instead on the upcoming date in May; he relocates the large portrait of _pink_ and _voluptuous curls_ with a serene smile, and turns the framed portrait of his parents face-down on his bedroom dresser.

Later, he will sit it right-side-up and run a finger around the frame, feeling hollow from never obtaining complete closure.

Later while he's absorbed in the task of creating bright red lines around his writs by snapping the tight rubber band to his skin, he gets a text from Connie.

* * *

Growing up, Steven paralleled the main protagonists of her childhood fantasy novels that Connie found starstruck. When both subjects are touched on with her therapist, it’s revealed that Connie has probably developed a romanization of her best friend, subconsciously projecting onto him because he seemed safe to do so on. He seemed like a dream-to-reality in her preteen mind, albeit an inelegant, realistic version.

Of course Connie denies the allegations but when she returns home and flops down on her bed, her gaze drifts to the long-forgotten book series on the bottommost shelf of her bookshelf, and her mind wonders and she _worries_.

How much of those books served as the foundation of her childhood decisions to get wrapped up in the world of the Gems? How much of it serves as the background of her burning motivation to be near Steven as a child? How much of it is subconsciously fueling her developing and growing feelings toward him?

Connie’s elbows are propped on her knees now, her head clutched in her hands, and is self-analyzing herself in dread when her cellphone chimes at an incoming text message.

It’s from Steven.

She doesn’t read his message before she types, sends, _We need to talk._

* * *

She never meets up with him, and she knows it's a bad, selfish decision on her part.

Connie feels isolated, disconnected from her body as she stares at the green speech bubble appear then disappear on her phone's screen, it's light illuminating her bedroom. The only other light are the streetlights filtering in from her opened window blinds.

Her home is silent; her parents aren't home—her mother picking up another shift at the hospital and her father investigating a home burglary. There's a frozen dinner Connie had been planning on re-warming in the microwave. She no longer has motivation to study for tonight.

The ominous three dots appear and disappear on Steven's side for three times in the two minutes Connie waits before she closes out the messaging app. Opens another app for video chatting and dials the contact of Patricia, a girl she met at cram school. Connie is informed that Patricia and a few others were about to go out for fun tonight.

A notification for Steven's text response drops down from the top of Connie's phone screen. She swipes it off to the right and agrees to go along with Patricia, needing to breathe and attempt to connect past surface level with those she calls _friends_.

She never responds to his text.

* * *

She responds that next morning instead.

* * *

On Connie's next therapy session, Priyanka is asked to speak in the room alone. When she emerges, she's carrying pages full of text, some highlighted in yellow, green, and blue, and diagrams of the human brain with captions. Connie sneaks a look as her mother passes by. One word grabs her attention: a part of a title on a page, "Imposter" in big and bold text.

In the car, Connie leans her cheek onto her fist while against the window and mutters, "This is all useless. I'm not broken or scarred, you know."

Priyanka thinks about her words carefully before replying. She chooses a calm, neutral tone. "It isn't about me thinking you're _broken_ —"

"But do you?"

Priyanka glances at her daughter as she slows for an approaching red traffic light. She inhales slowly, exhales just the same. There's a tightrope she's trying to walk between losing her daughter's trust and needing to know what has been made secret. "No, Kanupriya, I don't. But I think there are _some things_ you still don't feel you can talk to me about—for whatever reason—so your therapist is someone you _can_ talk to and get everything out with _words_ before—" She stops herself. Glances uncertainly out her window to a truck in the next lane.

Connie's eyebrow raises in disbelief at her mother's by-comment. _For whatever reason_.

"Ever since you returned from your outer space trip," Priyanka starts but stops. Changes the direction of her words. "And you've been going through so many changes—including you growing into a young woman—that I, uh... I just don't know..."

Rain begins to fall in a light drizzle. The jazz station playing from the car's radio goes on commercial break at the same time Priyanka turns on the windshield wipers.

"We were making good progress...I thought fitting a therapist into your schedule would allow you some _down time_..."

For as long as she can remember, Connie has felt emotions towards her parents, but now with the introduction of therapy into her already rigid schedule, Connie has even less time for herself along with her reaching her boiling point.

But instead of speaking her mind—indecisive of whether to blurt _"Are you serious?"_ or _"Do you really not know after all this time, after all the times I've told you?"_ —and instead she _does_ decide on asking, in a curt tone, "You aren't going to think about meds, are you?"

Priyanka doesn't respond. Or, exactly, she _hesitates_ to respond.

"Mom!" Connie cries. "I don't need meds!"

"Kan," her mother closes her eyes, keeping calm. "You missed a week's worth of violin and studying because you stayed in bed."

"I was _tired_ , mom. I get tired on occasion."

" _Who_ is the doctor, here?" The flippant comeback is Priyanka's favorite line.

Under her breath, Connie comments, " _Medical_ , not psychological." She doesn't care to look at her mother and check to see if it was heard clearly.

Whether Connie was heard or not, Priyanka gives no verbal indication—but her frown deepens with displeasure. "That wasn't just some _regular tiredness_. I know you, Kanupriya. You are traumatized and depressed! And you've _still_ barely told me or your father _all_ of what happened on that outer space trip or where you got those new _marks_ on your body!"

"They aren't new; they were under my shirt!" Connie defends. "I wasn't going to lift up my clothes and show you—"

"I am your mother," Priyanka objects. "I should have been told that you weren't feeling well. I shouldn't have had to find out through your _teacher_."

"But I'm fine," she says, and she believes it halfway. "And I told you; I just never _showed_ you because you'd get like this: they're old scars anyway from fighting Gems. And I'm not _depressed_ ; I'm just stressed."

"Over what? You're a child. You're not leaving anywhere. You don't have a job, or a family—"

"Isn't it time for my four-hour college prep studying?" Connie says, alarmingly calm for the tension inside the car. She turns away to gaze outside the car's window. "I don't want to run overtime with it from being late and having to shorten my break for _dinner_ again." Her arms are crossed and she no longer can look at her mother, her anger reaching her boiling point.

But she can feel Priyanka's stare burning into the side of her face and on her hair, her shoulder—all over her body. It swallows the silence between them. Connie doesn't know if her mother's stare is in shock, disbelief, or anger. She doesn't _care_ to know; Connie searches about when the last time she had cared _deeply_ for many things.

She gets the answer to her mother's feelings—like done to Priyanka by her mother, and her mother before her. The answering reaction to Connie's disrespect is in the form of the back of Priyanka's hand striking Connie's left temple and ear lightning-fast and with very strong force once the traffic light turns green.

* * *

Sometimes when she's curled up within her blankets, Connie thinks about how it wouldn't be so terrible to fall into a dark abyss. She thinks about how great it would be to no longer have any pressure from her family, to not have to keep performing in public, and to no longer have a care in the world.

She looks up from the cocoon she's made and sees the stack of pamphlets and mailed advertisements from college campuses, and she wonders how much of her college experience will be separated from fiction.

Following her desires, she hasn't studied for the rest of the day. But she hadn't touched her high school homework either. And as Connie looks towards her cluttered desk, her eyes drift to the glowing red numbers of her digital clock. It's two hours past when she was supposed to digitally submit an essay, its absence dropping her down an entire letter grade.

As of this moment, the online portal has closed its submissions.

In the darkness of night, Connie mentally snaps.

* * *

She has a breakthrough in therapy late one Friday evening.

"How are you feeling today," she's asked as they begin, and this time Connie doesn't hide the bore and uninterest from her facial expression.

Today, she doesn't hold back her words or her feelings.

"I feel like I am on a filmed show—like _Big Brother_ , or something. Like this is all a waste of time and I am wasting my time. _You're_ wasting my time with theoretics and this _meaningless_ talk and—I even read that that _doesn't help_ a percentage of the time. I've already diagnosed myself and everything." Connie holds her forehead in a hand, leaned back in the chair. "I shouldn't be here," she mutters, a saddened frown growing on her face. "I should be out with my friends. Shopping. Or—or playing games or doing _whatever_ it is that they do."

"You don't know what your friends like to do for fun?"

"Of course I don't know," Connie snaps. For the first time in her life she's becoming herself that isn't hiding to preserve other's feelings. "I don't have _the time!_ I go to school, study, do sports, play violin, and come here all on a fucking schedule." She counts each daily appointment on her fingers, absolutely fuming. "My whole life runs on a fucking schedule! I come _here_ instead of spending the time to be with my friends!"

And then Connie goes off on a rant, completely forgetting that her mother is down the hall with a _Taste of Home_ magazine in her hands. Connie gets up from her chair and stomps her feet and raises her voice for the first time in six years.

In the waiting lobby, Priyanka looks up from her magazine, faintly picking up her daughter's holler.

After she's finished, gasping for air, Connie's therapist asks permission to propose a question.

"So, what I'm getting is that you're unhappy with your current life. You feel it is restricting, and you want to live a normal teenage life which include being reckless and hanging out with your friends and experience teenaged rebellion. But you're stuck here, talking to me instead."

"Because my parents are worried about an old English assignment," Connie agrees, deadpanned.

The therapist shakes her head. "Connie; you and I both know you are too intelligent to believe that." She's gotten her hair cut and styled to frame her face, Connie notices. "Do you remember in one of our visits a few weeks ago when you came in and you shared that you _tuned out_ at times? Well," she pauses for dramatic effect. "That isn't particularly _normal_ behavior. It's a response to trauma. Now add that on top of the pressure of expectation from being a gifted child—which we'll tackle next time."

From across the room, Connie's shoulders begin to relax.

"The things you experienced _weren't_ normal, Connie. Not the gifted program, I mean."

"You think I don't know that?"

"I think you don't _consider_ the ramification it can cause. Such as: to your relations with your friends, and how you said that you always feel like an imposter while around them but crave their approval."

Connie's quiet and continues to stand, stupefied.

"But it wasn't just me," she thinks aloud. "You know that."

Her therapist nods. "But I am not your friend's therapist, and therefore I can only give direction to you and how to help you and keep you safe."

* * *

During one of her earlier visits, Connie retold the story how, many years ago, a presumed angel, a living star named Rose Quartz traveled to Earth and attracted many to revolve around her—human and Gem alike. Her gravitational pull was infectious and happened almost seamlessly. Rose burned brilliantly and powerful and shone like a beacon; her passion, devotion, and drive for change was just as enrapturing as her beauty.

Connie also told from her fragmented known knowledge how, unfortunately, Rose's time came to an end when she exploded—fantastically, marvelously, miraculously. But by that time, the discovery that Rose had been a black hole the entire time got around too late. By the time it had, her new star-son had begun falling down the same path as his mother, it unintentionally forged, him fated to turn into a hole like she.

* * *

Metaphorical mass increasing and emotional energy burning out, it's sometime between high school and discussions about Connie's leave for college that Steven notices his eyes reflecting pink in the mirror. And then came the outbursts; and then came the voices. The visions—the memories.

His gem cracks, he feels, somewhere beneath its visible surface.

Then it's envy, loneliness, hyper-fixating. He converses with his first love and he comes to the realization that they aren't guaranteed a storybook ending. Reality sets in and his fatigue worsens and so do the nightmares, the visions.

On the cusp of seventeen, the half-mortal is far from approaching the peak of his life, and these realizations are what sparks they're first "official argument." And he feels guilty about it, feels miserable and frustrated and powerless to their future, ironically. And though he tries to find the words to explain, his sentences get jumbled and his tongue gets knotted and the pain in his chest worsens and shoots directly to his stomach and he feels _horrendously nauseated_ —

Steven comes to the realization that college, and therefore separation, _has_ to be the best for him and Connie when he stamps his foot in a bout of inner-hatred and frustration, and creates a two-feet-wide crater of broken fieldstone around himself. The petrified look Connie wears, having narrowly missed becoming a victim, makes it clear to him that star-people weren't meant to be with humans. That there is a reason his parentage was a once-in-history thing of myths.

Even though he apologizes and they _appear_ to continue acting normally and familiar, he feels like it still isn't enough.

* * *

Connie leaves for college at seventeen and immediately after high school graduation. Her parents are the major influencers in her pursuing this. When she finally begins courses, she’s far from home, alone, and cries for the entire first two weeks in her dorm bedroom.

But come the end of winter semester of her second year, she’s grown, has created experiences, maintained high grades, developed a coffee addiction, and made enough friends to do Christmas gift exchanges with. She’s attracted the attention of a boy named Raheem, who she shares General Psych with, and who asks her out in time to spend New Year’s together.

She hasn’t seen the pink lion or Steven in a year and a half by the time of this new year—and as the following spring semester—begins.

* * *

When Steven awakes on his nineteenth birthday, he's alone.

A small collection of books rest on a nearby surface. A wooden wind chime hangs in front of his window. He'd fallen asleep before putting away his dinner last night, it still left on the stove. Beneath his cellphone is a stapled form; the inconsistency between "Steven DeMayo" to "Steven Universe DeMayo" and "Steven Quartz DeMayo" to "Steven Quartz DeMayo Universe"—his indecision is shown in the erased pencil's writing for an official name change.

By now, the star-child hasn't turned into a black hole like his assumed fate—his mass had nearly been enough to do so and he'd came a hair-width away from collapsing in on himself. But it's to be remembered that tendencies and mannerisms and psychical traits aside, he isn't _the same_ as a black hole, and therefore he's actually destined to be _something else_.

When he undresses, he avoids glimpsing at the scars surrounding his gem, not wanting the physical reminder of its removal and temporary touching death. In the shower, he's forcing himself to grow accustomed to the scars winding across his body like veins, left by the Gem Rejuvenator meant to wipe his mind like a restart button. He hides the burn marks and healed scratches down his arms—some collateral damage, some he'd successfully self-inflicted—and uses his letterman jacket to hide the scars shaped in twin columns down his back. When he brushes his teeth, he hates seeing the left-over bruises on his bottom gums where tusks had been just three years ago.

It's easier to hide the physical evidence, he'd been told, once. He used to assume that taking his temperature is the next best thing to monitoring the un-seeable.

Now, he's scrolling through his phone, waiting and then finally receiving the call with a doctor's name as the caller ID. He quickly muses his curls and straightens his shirt and wipes the crust from his eyes and tries to appear like he'd been awake before answering.

Space is what he needed, and space is what he'd taken the 1996 Dondai Supremo for, looking to travel the country to experience and meditate and do self-exploration on himself—but still keeping up his weekly therapy sessions via video call, of course.

* * *

When Steven is twenty-three, he's made a name for himself and has gained experience in the form of his fifth job steadily held.

He awakes alone and groggy and needing a haircut; he sits up in time to see the name of his uncle on his cellphone's screen. He checks his reflection in the screen before sliding a thumb across the green button to answer.

It's the third year he's kept in contact with his Uncle Andy—paternal, and after a rekindling and a needed re-introduction after their last meeting when he was thirteen on the family farm. Steven can say that he's proud that he did reach out. He's felt less lonely and secluded since. By extension, he's met extended family through Andy's marriage and that has helped fill the familial hole within him as well over the years.

His uncle's wife asks if he's going to be visiting in time for the holidays, eager to feed Steven and introduce him to more of her visiting family. Steven shares that he will try but will have to check his schedule, uncertain when he could leave his job and the fire station he’s volunteering at. Andy comes on the phone then, and Steven listens and laughs, staring at the photograph of Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst taped to the wall. He's then asked if he's spoken to Greg. _Mr. Universe is on tour_ , Steven answers.

Once hanging up, Steven marks off an event on his calendar. He's searching for a facial razor when he gets a text. It's from Connie.

(As of now, in the light of absence, they have been rekindling their friendship for two years now, talking on every other weekend.)

He video chats instead— _after_ shaving.

 _Hi stranger_ , she smiles on screen, and Steven's eyes light up. _Will I get to see you in Beach City for the holidays?_

* * *

During his trip back to Beach City, Connie reminds him in a tease about his "so romantic for being sixteen!" proposal made those many years ago. She twirls the glowing wrist bracelet between her fingers, a hand on her hip, and Steven's stomach lurches. She's taller now, more mature. She has a serious internship, he's told. She's grown her hair down to her shoulders. Cut bangs. An Indo-Western Mehndi-inspired tattoo on her left calf leg. She's had relationships including other boyfriends, and normal human adversity, and _experience_. She no longer orbits anything but herself.

Three days before the holidays, she proposes the preposition to " _date first, for a couple years."_ And then, as she keeps eye contact with him—which are wide and bewildered and _stunned_ , honestly—she slides the bracelet onto her wrist for the first time as a proposal since that day as a teen.

"If I remember correctly, I had only said ‘ _Not now'_ back then."

And for the first time in nearly nine years, Steven turns full-bodied pink in an intense flush and astonishment.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I hope did Connie justice and made this seem as realistic as possible._


End file.
